Alvaro Campos Untitled (Frozen Shadow) är en fascinerade ögonblicksbild. Vårsolen gassar och trädens grenar skuggar fortfarande snön. Skuggor återkommer ofta i konstnärens arbetet.
Han berättar:
- As an artist I began with photography, I studied at the International Center of Photography in New York. In my work I often come back to the principles of photography like light and shadow or time, and approach them from a philosophical perspective.
It's difficult to talk about shadows without referring to light since shadows appear where when something gets in the way of light. Not only are they the building blocks of photography and how it works but they also happen to be crucial for the way that our eyes visualise the world and how we form images of reality in our minds.
I often approach light and shadows as material, the material that forms the image that I see, where light would be the material and shadow the non-material. Light and shadows are often just something that we don't notice, they are part of the background, we simply take them for granted. That's why I am interested in turning them into the subject of my work, I believe in making visible what is usually overlooked, in uncovering the small treasures that otherwise might stay hidden in the fabric of everyday life.
Time is crucial in the mechanics of our human activities and how we relate to the world. In the case of frozen shadows I asked myself what time would be like if we hadn't invented watches? What is time outside of our human conceptual frameworks? Does it even exist?
One way to look at it is by experiencing and recording changes in everyday phenomena, the shifts in light, for instance, the way shadows shrink or extend themselves as the earth moves around the sun. All these small details and rhythms have a way of connecting time to a greater picture and to make it more concrete and less abstract. It's a way of trying to come closer to it, to understand it by exploring it through the body and the senses rather than turning it into a mental abstraction.
Perhaps it's not really about asking what time is, but where time is?
Alvaro Campo
Porträtt: Alvaro Campo